With their ever-increasing performance and lower cost, robots are now extensively used in many fields. Robots, for example, can be used to execute various tasks including manipulating or transferring objects from one place to another. Such tasks are particularly useful in manufacturing, assembly, packing, packaging, warehousing, and shipping. In executing these tasks, robots can replicate human actions, thereby replacing or reducing human involvement that would otherwise require humans to perform dangerous and repetitive tasks. However, despite the technological advancements, robots still lack the sophistication necessary to duplicate human sensitivity, adaptability, and dexterity required for executing more complex tasks. For example, robotic hands or grippers often have difficulty grabbing objects with relatively soft or irregular surfaces, due to lack of sensitivity in contact sensors or insufficient granularity in force control.
Accordingly, there remains a need for improved techniques for controlling and managing a robot's ability to grip and handle objects. In view of the ever-increasing commercial competitive pressures, along with growing consumer expectations and the diminishing opportunities for meaningful product differentiation in the marketplace, it is increasingly critical that answers be found to these problems. Additionally, the need to reduce costs, improve efficiencies and performance, and meet competitive pressures adds an even greater urgency to the critical necessity for finding answers to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.